What if plants had feelings?

Regardez le film pour enfants : D’une rare crudité

Film commentary: A rare crudity

A strange and poetic film, what if plants had feelings? Is there such a thing as plant intelligence?
Science says that consciousness is the product of brain activity and that plants have no brain or nervous system. But why should only humans be endowed with consciousness or intelligence?

Is it impossible for a plant to be aware of its environment and perhaps of itself? This is a topic that will open up a long debate with the children and, although it will not lead to any conclusions, it will invite the children to think about the notion of respect for plants, animals and the world around us.

Transmediality: Living World

The short film can be an opportunity to talk to children about the existence of living species that exhibit surprising behaviour that scientific research has not yet fully explained.

Why not introduce pupils to the blob (Physarum polycephalum), which is neither a plant, nor an animal, nor a fungus, capable of moving around, without a brain but with a memory.
Or the immortal jellyfish (Turritopsis nutricula), capable of renewing its cells like other jellyfish, but also capable of reversing its ageing process indefinitely.

It is also fascinating to differentiate with children between the species, which is made up of individuals that can potentially reproduce, and the individuals themselves. Mayflies, for example, live for only a few hours but are considered the oldest winged insects on the planet.

Transmediality: Art and nature

Digital walk through the National Gallery of Art and the different representations of nature.

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, 1590

Vincent van Gogh, 1890

Paul Cézanne, 1893

The National Gallery of Art in Washington DC has over 50,000 paintings available for download in high-resolution digital format and users can use all the images on its website for free and legally.

Other major museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) in New York, with 400,000 images available in high resolution, but also the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, with 125,000 Dutch masterpieces, or the Los Angeles County Museum (LACMA) offer free access to their collections.